Film student and aspiring screenwriter Maggie Butler (Jill Schoelen) has recurring dreams of a young girl named Sarah who is caught in a fire and being chased by a strange man who is trying to kill her. She records what she remembers on an audiotape and plans on making the story into a film. Maggie lives with her mother Suzanne (Dee Wallace Stone), who has been receiving demonic prank calls. On her way to class, Maggie shuns the advances of her boyfriend Mark (Derek Rydall), explaining that she can't be distracted from writing her script.